Wikidata:Property proposal/traffic sign template image

traffic sign template image

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Transportation

   Done: traffic sign template image (P8505) (Talk and documentation)

Description	image used as a template for creating traffic sign images (P14) for specific instances of this sign or members of this highway system
Data type	Commons media file
Domain	traffic sign (Q170285), highway system (Q25631158)
Allowed values	SVG files only, because raster files cannot be used as templates
Example 1	Interstate Highway System (Q94247) → File:I-00 template.svg
Example 2	Interstate Highway System (Q94247) → File:I-000 template.svg
Example 3	United States Numbered Highway System (Q408192) → File:US 00 template.svg
Example 4	United States Numbered Highway System (Q408192) → File:US 000 template.svg
Example 5	United States Numbered Highway System (Q408192) → File:US 0 (1961 cutout) template.svg valid in place (P3005) → California (Q99)
Example 6	United States Numbered Highway System (Q408192) → File:US 00 (1961 cutout) template.svg valid in place (P3005) → California (Q99)
Example 7	New Zealand state highway network (Q444222) → File:NZL state highway 0 template.svg
Example 8	New Zealand state highway network (Q444222) → File:NZL state highway 00 template.svg
Example 9	national highways of India (Q1967342) → File:India National Highway 00 template.svg
Source	en:Special:PrefixIndex/Module:Road data/strings, c:Category:Road sign templates
Planned use	Add to items about national- and state-level route networks in the United States
See also	traffic sign (P14)

Motivation

This property would make route shield templates more discoverable and enable data consumers, such as users of OpenStreetMap federated queries, to easily and systematically obtain templates to use when building map renderers, without having to scour Commons categories and manually associate images with network and cycle_network values. For now, I'm refraining from proposing a corresponding property for sign blanks, because traffic sign (P14) is probably sufficient for that purpose. What makes template images different is that they generally aren't suitable for display. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:45, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support Arlo Barnes (talk) 02:18, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
•  Support cool Nepalicoi (talk) 13:48, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
• All the examples are from the United States. Is this a US-specific property? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:40, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

  @Pigsonthewing: This property is usable worldwide. I've added a few more examples to illustrate how it would be used outside the U.S. At the moment, not every highway system has an image template or dedicated item, but they can be created afterwards. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 00:25, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

•  Support NoInkling (talk) 01:00, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
•  Comment Why does it have zeros, wouldn't it be nicer to have a placeholder which can be modified via url? Germartin1 (talk) 08:06, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

  @Germartin1: That's a convention among existing templates, since 0 in most highway fonts takes up the same width as digits 2–9 and is easily recognizable as a placeholder rather than a real route number. However, this property doesn't impose any constraints on the contents of the images, since file contents aren't visible to constraints or WDQS. It would be interesting to think about a more automated system. Commons does support language switches, but for these template images to be automated, we'd need support for SVG parameters, which is still a W3C working draft that I don't think has much software support. [1][2] The more immediate solution would be a qualifier set to the ID of the <tspan> that contains the placeholder text to be replaced. This qualifier could be useful to external tools but not to anything built into a wiki or WDQS. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 19:13, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

  @Germartin1: I proposed placeholder text element ID to bring that idea closer to reality. – Minh Nguyễn ^💬 02:09, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

@Mxn, Arlo Barnes, Nepalicoi, Pigsonthewing, NoInkling, Germartin1:  Done traffic sign template image (P8505) Pamputt (talk) 17:52, 30 July 2020 (UTC)